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Publications (17)
Working Paper
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After 50 years of optimistic predictions that marine mining will soon take off, it still remains to be seen if and when this will happen. In 2018 the total value of all marine mining, including both offshore mining and the so far non-existing deep-seabed mining, was estimated to be around US$35...
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– The Global Methane Pledge—opportunities and risks
The global energy transition is happening, but too slowly to limit climate change to acceptable levels, for diverse reasons. Carbon emissions policies and measures focus too little on absolute emission targets and too much on relative measures such as carbon intensity. Focus is needed on early...
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This paper applies an environmentally extended input–output analysis, leveraging the Eora database, to estimate the global raw material footprints of 51 African nations from 1995 to 2015. It employs least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and panel regression models to quantify the effects...
– How tax havens facilitate corruption in the extractive industries
In many countries, news of an oil discovery or the award of an exploration license is rarely greeted with enthusiasm by the general public. Any hopes of widespread development quickly vanish once people realize only a small elite group stands to benefit. Estimates of global foreign bribery suggest...
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This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum fuels. However, the impact of oil theft is...
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– Policy options for a sustainable fiscal regime
Zambia has changed its mineral tax regime repeatedly during the past decades in a bid to raise mineral revenue, but with only modest success. This paper looks at what the country needs to do to create a mining fiscal regime that could sustain operations, boost output, and raise revenues without...
At the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, world leaders discussed the need to scale-up ambition to address key global challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, political extremism, and widening inequality. With less than two weeks to go before the COP26 Climate...
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is seen as the last best chance for countries and companies to set out how they are actually going to deliver the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) target of no more than 1.5 oC. The venting and flaring of natural gas, common...
The long-awaited COP26 in Glasgow is about to start. Billed as the most important COP to date, it is widely seen as a last chance to avoid a global temperature rise beyond 1.5°C. Yet expectations of major breakthroughs weaken by the week. Climate funding to help the developing world remains...
The economic decline of Nauru, an island in the Central Pacific, is a cautionary tale. Nauru was the highest GDP per capita country in the world in the 1970s, due to the value of its phosphate deposits. A few decades later, the country reached the brink of economic collapse when its phosphate...
The transition to net zero over the next few decades will involve a large increase in the global demand for many metals essential to the renewables revolution driving that transition. Recent research by the World Bank has identified a minimum of 17 main metals needed in significant quantities for...
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– A reconceptualization of natural resource value in the era of climate change
Underlying the management of revenues from natural resource extraction is a set of assumptions about how abundant and how valuable these resources are. Nevertheless, existing approaches to measuring the value of extractive resources are seriously flawed. This paper proposes two avenues for improving...
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This second paper on hydrocarbon gas flaring and venting builds on our first, which evaluated the economic and social cost (SCAR) of wasted natural gas. These emissions must be reduced urgently for natural gas to meet its potential as an energy-transition fuel under the Paris Agreement on Climate...
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Atmospheric emissions urgently need to reduce for natural gas to fulfill its potential role in the energy transition to achieve the Paris Agreement on climate change. This paper establishes the magnitude and trends of flaring and venting in oil and gas operations, as well as their emissions and...
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– Revenue generation, investor-stakeholder alignment, and public policy
This paper discusses the political economy of oil in Uganda since the announcement of its discovery in 2006. It focuses on the dynamics of oil revenue generation (pre-commercial production) and expenditure, investor-stakeholder contestation (i.e. between bureaucrats, investors/oil companies, and...
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– Economic and policy implications for natural resource exporters in developing countries
The emergence of a mass market for electric vehicles (EVs) offers considerable development opportunities for resource exporters, given their intensive raw material requirements, including for cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, aluminium, and manganese. To exploit the benefits of new demand, empirical...
Displaying 16 of 17 results